“What—okay, yeah.” You can just about see his eyes twitching behind the opaque disks of his gaming glasses. “Ten seconds…right.” He slides the glasses off. “What should I expect?”
“We’re going for dinner,” you repeat patiently. “You know, a chance to have a meeting without starving to death.”
“Yes, but who with? You’re the only person I’ve met so far,” he adds.
“Oh, right. I guess I should have introduced you—well, the rest of the team was in a meeting when you showed up, so it wasn’t exactly practical. Now’s your chance. Unless you had something else on?”
Jack looks momentarily perplexed. “No, nothing doing,” he says ruefully. He lays his glasses down carefully on top of the gaming laptop—the screen’s a shimmery blur from where you’re sitting. “I have no life.” He chuckles, trying to make a joke of the obviously defensive reaction, and you feel a stab of unworklike empathy.
“Well, let’s go.” You stand up. “I’ll introduce you to everybody.”
Chris is down in the lobby with Mohammed and Brendan. They’ve shed their ties, which is a bad sign—either there’s zero probability of any client action today, or Chris is planning on leading an overnight death march. But at least it’ll be a well-fed death march, you figure, as he leads you all into the hotel bistro. The manager has already sorted out a table at the back. A minute later Margaret and Faye show up and the forced small-talk and time-filling silences stop.
“Brendan, why don’t you fill us all in on the time line?” Chris suggests, once introductions are made and starters are ordered.
“Sure.” Brendan stares at his water glass dourly for a moment. (Another sign that things are going badly: Chris didn’t start by ordering a couple of bottles of stockbroker’s ruin. He wants everybody sober.) “It’s a mess. Here’s what we know. Last Thursday someone at Hayek managed to get the police interested. They were supposed to be keeping a lid on it pending a proper investigation, but someone panicked, and to make matters worse, it’s local plod, not SOCA or the Serious Fraud Agency. Then the police discovered that one of Hayek’s people, Nigel MacDonald, is missing. The latest update—don’t ask me for details, and I shall tell you no lies—is that it’s a full-on missing person investigation. Seems the plod went to call on Mr. MacDonald at home and found signs of a struggle: They’re treating it as a possible murder case.”
You look around the table as your soup arrives: There are long faces all round. “That isn’t very helpful,” Margaret says carefully. Damn right it isn’t: Having to work with the police getting underfoot is bad enough, having the Police actually threatening to do their job…
“Indeed not.” Brendan sounds ghoulishly pleased with himself. “Can I continue? It appears to be an inside job, the insider in question has vanished, the police think he may be dead, and to add to the fun, they’re treating the offices as a secondary crime scene. If MacDonald is dead, that turns this into a murder investigation, and they pull out all the stops.” His glance takes in Jack, who is sitting next to you, shoulders slightly hunched as he chews on a crust of garlic bread. “Obviously, they’re going to consider the robbery in Avalon Four as a likely motive for the hypothetical killing, so if that happens, we won’t be able to move without tripping over a dibble.”
Margaret smiles and puts her soup spoon down. “What did you achieve today?” she asks you. And you think: I should have seen this coming.
“I—” You corpse for a moment. What the hell are you going to say? I played games for four hours straight? It must show on your face because Margaret’s smile becomes slightly fixed as she waits. “I, uh…”
“Um. May I?” asks Jack. You nod, speechless. “We obviously couldn’t get access to Hayek Associates, so we decided to use the time productively by setting up a high-performance Zone client network, then covering some essential familiarization material. We also discussed ways and means of tracking Mr. MacDonald’s history in Zonespace, because—as you’re no doubt aware—most inside jobs also involve an external partner who can launder the merchandise, and finding the outside connection is our best hope for discovering what actually happened inside Hayek Associates.”
He then launches into a spiel of explanatory technobabble that leaves you agog with admiration. It’s not so much the ten-euro words that do it as the polished professionalism with which he slots them together. For a moment, you almost know what it must feel like to be a Thames Gateway resident talking to a flood insurance salesman. “That’s about it,” you add, shrugging, when he nods at you. “Any questions?” You hold your breath, hoping nobody calls your bluff.
Margaret is studying Jack as if he’s your pet sheep-dog and she’s just caught him reciting Shakespearean sonnets. At least you’re off the hook. “No, no questions,” she says thoughtfully. She looks at Brendan. “When can we get access?”
“I’ve asked London to try to get someone to talk to the police.” He drives a piece of bruschetta around his plate in pursuit of a puddle of olive oil. “Hopefully, tomorrow morning if we can just get through to this Inspector Kavanaugh’s boss.”
“Right.” Chris leans back in his chair and smiles lopsidedly. “We’ll have to wait on it, then. Meanwhile, here’s something for you all to bear in mind. If it turns out that Nigel MacDonald was working on his own, or with an external partner, but essentially trying to rip his employer—then we’re off the hook. The HA business plan is exonerated, our remit doesn’t include criminal background checks on junior employees, and we’re out of here. On the other hand, if there’s evidence pointing to a member of the board, we’re still potentially in trouble. So we have a good idea what we’re looking for, don’t we?”
You nod, even though you’ve got a nagging feeling that this doesn’t entirely add up. Does Chris have some kind of hidden agenda here? But then he takes a sip of water and continues.
“Whatever the cause, though, we need to know enough about what happened, and how, to ensure it doesn’t bite us again. So, Elaine, finding out what actually happened is still your absolute priority, while the rest of us make sure it was just a rogue employee.”
Oh, now you get it. Chris is setting up to pull everyone else out, just as soon as he’s confirmed that none of Hayek Associates’ board were in on the robbery. You’re going to get left with the clean-up, and doubtless he’ll cut a deal to subcontract your services out to Hayek’s insurers, or maybe even the local cops, for a tidy sum. Stitch-up. You’re going to be stuck up here in Edinburgh hunting needles in virtual haystacks while Chris and Margaret go home, announce the job’s all done, and move on to the next project. Lovely!
After the meal, there’s a general drift towards the hotel bar, where Chris has announced his intention of buying a round. It’s the usual team-building thing, and it’s the last thing you feel like taking part in, constructive attitude or no. But Margaret corners you in the lobby, all the same. “I hope you don’t think you’re being singled out for something bad,” she says, a calculating light in her eyes. “It’s not like that at all. Chris got word from above that he’s wanted down south, and I agreed that we need someone with a steady hand to tidy this up, and we really need to get back to London before Avixa or GenState notice we’re gone. Chris trusts you; otherwise, he wouldn’t have put it in your hands.”
You manage to force yourself to smile. Okay, so it is a stitch-up. You don’t score points inside DBA for being the lone gun on a trouble-shooting mission, out in the cold where nobody can see you. “That’s perfectly alright, Margaret. Chris was completely clear on what he wanted. I’ll see it gets done.”